We are only two months in to 2020, and cyber-attacks are already on the rise in Canada.
A week ago, University of Saskatchewan was hit with an online denial of service (DoS) attack. Read the full story on the CBC website.
What happened?
The University of Saskatchewan was hit with an online denial of service (DoS) attack. We the help of their proactive In-house IT team, they were able to detect the threat and isolate the potential for an attack.
The question here is ‘what is if you don’t have a proactive team of IT experts to support your network?’
“Hackers and cybercriminals may be less likely to go after larger institutions or governments, as they’re perceived to have sophisticated security systems, while a mid-sized school like the U of S may be perceived to have a lesser system.” – Alec Couros, a professor of educational technology and media at the University of Regina and an expert on digital citizenship and society said in this CBC news article.
What is Denial of Service (DoS) attack and how does it work?
Denial of Service (DoS) hacking is where a thief/hacker will restrict access to devices, network and other systems machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by disrupting services of a host connected to the Internet.
What are the consequences of Denial of Service (DoS) attack?
Everything that is dependent on the targeted computer or network is affected. This may include emails, website, confidential files and online (including banking) accounts.
How does Denial of Service (DoS) attack work?
There are many ways an attacker can perform a Denial of Service (DoS) attack but the most common way is by flooding the targeted host or network with traffic until the target cannot respond or the system crashes, preventing access for legitimate users. In this type of DoS attack, the attacker sends several requests to the target server at the same time creating congestion to the network.
The requests sent by the attackers are illegitimate and have fabricated return addresses, which mislead the server when it tries to authenticate the requestor. As the junk requests are processed continuously, the server gets overwhelmed, which causes a DoS condition to validate the illegitimate requestor. It’s like someone ringing your doorbell every five seconds and chances are you opened the door just out of frustration.
DoS attacks can cost an organization both time and money while their resources and services are inaccessible.
How to protect yourself from Denial of Service (DoS) attack?
Here are some of our suggestions to protect you from sophisticated digital crimes like Denial of Service (DoS) attack:
- Enrol in a DoS protection service
The one that detects abnormal traffic flows and redirects traffic away from your network. The DoS traffic is filtered out, and clean traffic is passed on to your network.
- Create a Disaster Recovery Plan
A Disaster Recovery Plan will ensure successful and efficient communication, mitigation, and recovery in the event of an attack. - Strengthen your security
It is also important to take steps to strengthen the security posture of all of your internet-connected devices in order to prevent them from being compromised.
– Install and maintain antivirus software.
– Install a firewall and configure it to restrict traffic coming into and leaving your computer.
– Evaluate security settings and follow good security practices in order to minimalize the access other people have to your information, as well as manage unwanted traffic (see 9 Tips to Prevent You from Cyberattacks).
- If you are a business owner, have an expert to protect your enterprise
Business owners must treat cyber security as an enterprise-level risk and STOP having BAND-AID fixes when it comes to the security of your business. You must have experts who are dedicated to your business security 24/7 and 365 days a year.
To learn more about how you can protect yourself and your business from digital threats such as Cellphone SIM Port Hacking or have questions, talk to our Idealogical Security Expert, call 416.410.5030 or email [email protected].